


Twist The Knife And Bleed My Aching Heart

by boombangbing



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: Angst, F/M, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-09
Updated: 2011-02-09
Packaged: 2017-10-15 13:36:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/161316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boombangbing/pseuds/boombangbing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam doesn't mean to fall in love, but then, he never does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twist The Knife And Bleed My Aching Heart

The first time Adam sees Elle, she is three, and she is tiny, and she is angry. She cries all the way down the corridor past his window. Bob is a few steps behind, silent, a look of detachment colouring his features. The look of a bad father, Adam muses; like, after all, recognises like.

He doesn't see her for another thirteen years. Thirteen years of incarceration, and the growing realisation, the gnawing fear, that a life imprisoned could stretch into infinity. He expects he'll go quite mad before he reaches infinity, but he still doesn't relish the idea.

When Elle – sixteen, a face full of poorly applied make-up, bravado as flimsy as a piece of tracing paper – bounds into his room for the very first time, he ignores her.

“Did you know that they said that like everything's going to explode on the millennium. The millennium bug is going to destroy the internet, and we're all going to be lost and confused, and I guess a lot of people are gonna die because there'll be riots and I guess a lot of people will get trampled, and all the farmers will go mad and kill the cattle, and then we won't have anything to eat.”

He nods, and takes the sandwich offered, and waits out this girl's rambling in silence.

-

The second time she comes to his room, she opens with, “Well, the world didn't end. There was no trampling whatsoever.” And she says it with such weary disappointment that he laughs.

-

She asks him what love is like, once. _Is it like in the movies?_ she asks, and he says, _What's it like in the movies?_

She tells him that it's like _Romeo and Juliet_ , that love means you'll die for each other, that if you're meant to be together, you'll find a way.

He tells her that _Romeo and Juliet_ isn't a love story, it's a tragedy about two stupid teenagers. And anyway, if she'd read the original play instead of watching the film adaptation that she wittered on about so much, she'd know that Romeo was a selfish bastard, and hardly a romantic hero. He tells her, as well, that tragic love stories are a curse. That they eat you up until love feels the same as hate, and that no one should live for anyone other than themselves.

She doesn't come back for weeks after that.

-

“Do you think you'll be here forever?” It's summer, and the air conditioning is broken. Elle's hair hangs in limp tendrils about her face, Adam's shirt sticks to his back.

“No,” he says, though he's really not at all sure.

“Do you think I will?”

“I don't know,” he says, and by the look on her face, it's the answer she was expecting, though perhaps not hoping for. Forever is such an insignificant time for her, like blowing out a candle, and her father's trapped her here, mentally, if not physically.

She leans forward until their noses meet, he can see every open pore, sweat glistening on her top lip. Her kiss is soft and close-mouthed, it feels warm and slippery, it lasts only a few seconds.

She is seventeen, and he is too, too old for this.

-

How quickly he turns his despair to good use.

Elle is plainly attracted to him. He is safe, locked away in this room, ever the same, always there, and she is drawn to that security. He can use this to his advantage.

He starts with small things: leaning closer to her when she sits on his cot, brushing his fingers over hers when she hands him his food, touching her knee to get her attention. She reacts predictably. A pretty blush spreads over her cheeks, and she ducks her head; she looks almost normal. He catches her chin in his hand and tilts her head up. “Have you ever done... anything with a man, Elle?” he asks quietly.

“No.” She's quite open about it, there's no embarrassment lining her words. “I've never had the chance.”

“That's a shame.” He brushes hair from her face, curls it round her ear. “The world's missing out.”

“The world wouldn't like me,” she says, shifting for a moment into almost terrifying lucidity. And then she giggles. “You should eat your food. Daddy doesn't like waste.”

-

He starts to drop hints, little things like: 'I haven't seen the sun in thirty years, you know.' and 'Have you ever been to the beach? It's really quite lovely.' and 'What I wouldn't give for comfortable bed.'

She says: 'I can't swim.' and 'Daddy doesn't let me go out on my own.' and 'I wish he'd trust me sometimes.'

“Does he never trust you?” he asks, and she smiles.

“I'm a liability,” she says, and, ah, he understands. He knows their judgement – her father, Angela, Kaito, his _friends_. They said he was a liability, after he brought them together, gave them a purpose, taught them what it was to be _better_ than the mundanities of 'real' life. They, in turn, betrayed him. And now Bob's betraying his _own_ daughter the same way. Even Adam finds that reprehensible.

“Do you love your father?” he asks.

“Yes,” she says quickly, though, he notes, without any feeling. She's monotone, and unfocused, looking at the floor rather than at him. “Did you love your father?”

“My father was a peasant. He died of dysentery when I was young, and my mother died in childbirth shortly after. I never gave much thought to them.”

“What did you do? Without any parents?” She honestly sounds wondrous, as if she can't imagine a time not managed by an authority figure.

“I was what was called a 'vagabond' for a time – I pretended that I couldn't walk and begged for money – then I was rounded up with other street kids and shipped to America.” He pauses; she's rapt with his story, and he tries to dredge up more details from the recesses of his memory. It's been so long, his recollection of his childhood is largely a collage of flashes: death, eating from the sewer, being put in the stocks, being whipped. Everyone's faces are a blur to him now, they're all faceless in his mind, even himself as a child.

“I think I believed that when I got to America it would be different, but I was still a peasant. I begged and scrounged and stole, and then when I was twenty I met a Lord. He was touring the Americas alone, an adventurer type, if you will. I killed him and stole his identity.”

“Lord Adam,” she says, a laugh around her words. She is unfazed by his 'confession'.

“Adam isn't my real name, darling,” he says. The 'darling' slips out naturally and she blushes at it. He-- is disturbed that it wasn't planned.

“What's your real name?” she asks.

“Truly, I don't remember. Perhaps I never knew it.”

She slips her hand into his and squeezes.

-

The next time she sees him, she says, “Sometimes I don't love my father.” Though she says it so fast that it comes out: _sometimesidontlovemyfather_ , like she is afraid of defining every word.

“I know,” he replies.

“How?” she says, setting down her tray and sitting beside him.

“How could you not?” he asks. She presses her shoulder against his and doesn't reply.

-

Adam's long since learnt that self-deception helps no one, not least oneself. His feelings for Elle have changed – he isn't sure of precisely when this change occurred, but he recognises the sensation. Of caring. Of... loving.

They thought him incapable of caring, Bob in particular. He was just a tool to them, and he underestimated them, mistaking them for a group of seemingly directionless teens. Unfortunately for him, they were anything but.

“I cared deeply,” he finds himself saying one day, Elle cross-legged on his pillow. He has one leg tucked beneath him, the other hanging off the edge of the bed, Elle's fingertips brushing his bare ankle. “I wanted the world to be better. I still do. I have seen the world go wrong so often, and no one ever learns. Do you understand?”

“Yeah,” she says. “People are so cruel.”

“That they are,” he says with a sigh.

-

She is nineteen. Today. She has not been to a concert. She has not been to the cinema. She has never sat in the audience of a play, or eaten chicken wings from a bucket in a drive-thru.

She lies on the floor of his cell as he lies on the cot. She wants him to tell her about the world. Just the good parts, she says. She knows the rest.

He tells her of the first ever plane to take flight, of Orville Wright taking him up in the machine, North Carolina spreading out before him, the ocean a vast blueness that seemed to fill the whole world. And then the sky; endless clouds, and he thought, then: _the world is going to change now_.

He tells her about Woodstock, and music and peace and thinking, for a moment, that the world was not a lost cause.

He tells her about Beethoven, and full concert halls and shutting his eyes and just... being. For a moment, free of himself.

She doesn't speak for a long while once he's finished, and he doesn't either. And then, at length, there is a sob, a small pathetic sound, and she says, “None of that will ever happen to me.”

“I suppose not.”

“My father will never let me escape.”

He rolls over and watches her: there are tears rolling down from the corners of her eyes, dripping onto the cell floor. She cries until she leaves.

-

Sometimes she comes to him and just screams. She blasts the walls with her electricity, and holds her head in her hands and shrieks and curses her father's name. She yells up at the camera in the corner and claws at her skin and hits things.

“This is never gonna end,” she whispers harshly amid her rage, her eyes shining almost unnaturally bright.

“It will,” he says. He beckons her to the cot. “Trust me, everything ends eventually.”

She sits beside him, knees to her chest. “How can you be so calm?”

“Do you really believe that I'm calm?” he asks, and she nods. He caresses her cheek. “Elle, if I could, I would tear this whole world to pieces, and I would start with your father. Every moment of every day, I'm filled with the most indescribable _rage_. It is terrifying, honestly, the capacity I have to hate, and it has always been in me. In my best dreams, my hands are bloody.”

It is now that they have their first real kiss, her hand gripping the back of his neck too tight, her teeth sliding over his lips, their foreheads pressed together. “I'm glad I'm not the only one,” she breathes against his lips. And just like that, he loves her.

-

“Have you ever loved anyone?” she asks. She sits in the corner, below the camera, so that she cannot be seen. He isn't sure why she feels this necessary, but questioning her motives is a highway to nowhere.

After a pause, he says, “Yes.”

“Tell me about them.” She says it without inflection, and he's not sure really sure what she's _actually_ asking, but he decides to take it on face value.

“Angelica,” he says. “We were married for sixty two years, and we knew everything about each other – you do when you've been married that long. She was a tough, hard woman, and I loved her completely. There was Diane, and I didn't so much love her as I did just really like her, which you might have guessed if unusual for me. And there was Trina – she was so _alive_ , so vibrant that she momentarily restored my faith in humanity.”

The truth is, however, that he loved all ten of his wives, and many besides; he always _does_. He appreciates qualities in people that perhaps young men don't, and this appreciation grows until it overwhelms him and makes him foolish. Just as it is now.

“Mm,” she replies. “Do you think anyone will ever love me like that?”

He smiles. “I think so, yes.” He is rewarded with a hug.

-

And then, things change.

Elle comes to him one day, babbling about 'an assignment, a real assignment, Adam! Daddy trusts me' and she is in and out of his cell in a flurry of squeals and kisses and promises that she will be back soon. That everything will be okay, and Daddy will start listening to her now, and she'll tell him, you know she'll tell him that Adam's learnt his lesson and should come home with her.

He believes it, for a time. Her happiness is infectious, and her kisses more so, and he thinks: _perhaps._

 _Perhaps we have a chance._

Her visits come less frequently, daily visits turn to weekly, then bi-monthly, then once a month.

He is anxious and worried, and angry with himself for it. He comes to blows with many of Elle's replacements.

It's evening when she visits again. It's dark, probably late, but he is awake, lying with his eyes open, thinking hard enough to give himself an aneurysm.

The door clicks shut softly behind her, and she walks over to him, staring down for a moment at the cot before climbing on and settling herself between his side and the wall. He stays perfectly still, considers pushing her away, pretending to be asleep, telling her to stop bothering him. But he doesn't do any of those things (because perhaps it would be better for her if he did, and he's not a good man, is he?). She rests her head on his chest, twists fingers into the hem of his t-shirt.

“Your heart is beating very fast,” she comments, then falls silently. She takes a breath, as if to speak, then hesitates. Then: “Do you think it's possible to love more than one person at the same time?”

He tenses, she shifts at the change, and he wants to say that, no, you can only love one person at a time, and that she should love _him_ and no other, but it seems unnecessarily cruel.

He had rarely thought, before, of the necessity of his cruelty.

“Certainly,” he says, controlling his pitch, forcibly relaxing his muscles. “Love is not either/or, it's not always _Romeo and Juliet_.”

“Okay,” she says, in a small voice, and looks at him in the dark. Her fingers at the hem of his t-shirt pull it up, and she rolls onto him. She pulls his t-shirt off, and he unbuttons her jeans; it is uncomfortable in such a small space, but they manage, and it has been so, so long since his breath has caught in his throat like this, his fingers raked the bare skin of someone's back; since he's been touched at all.

This is a vow as much as anything: he takes it to mean _I love you first_ , though she doesn't say a word, and neither does he.

She stays with him till morning.

-

And then, things change again.

It's not two days since they made love – such a cliché term, he feels, but apt on this occasion – and he is reading a book that someone slung at him after his protracted bouts of shouting at the door. He isn't expecting any company, and is rather embarrassingly getting into this dime-store romance novel, when the door is flung open, then slammed closed.

Elle leans against the door. Her hands are shaking, her hair and clothes not the usual meticulous neatness that she puts so much time into. She is crying. It's hardly the first time she's cried in front of him, but this is... genuine, not a high or a low.

He puts down his book and watches her. Her pain is almost tangible, and he lasts all of a minute before he crosses the room and wraps his arms around her. “Darling, what's wrong?” he asks, half guiding, half carrying her to the cot.

“What did I do?” she mumbles into his chest. “Oh God, this is all my fault.”

“What's your fault? Elle, tell me what happened,” he says more firmly,and she sits back, blinks away tears. She looks wretched, and his pulse quickens. This is serious, everything screams this fact at him.

“Because of me,” she starts, focusing on a spot near his shoulder, “dozens, hundreds, of people are going to die, and they don't deserve it, and I ruin everything, I hurt everyone.”

“Elle,” he says, and he has no idea where's he's going to go with this. It comes to nought, however: she starts, as if shocked, looks at the door, then back at him.

“I'm not going to be able to get you out of here,” she says, desperation edging her words. “I never was going to be able to, I was an idiot to think that my dad would let it happen. I- I- I'm doomed, and you're the only good thing that ever happened to me but it was never going to work.”

She kisses him, her tears wetting his face an tasting salty on his lips. He believes that he is, perhaps, also crying, but it's impossible to tell. They kiss frantically; he kisses her cheeks, her eyelids, she curls her hands into his hair and holds on. He's not sure how long this lasts before the knock comes at the door. It opens without further warning, and she remains, clinging to him as her father stands at the doorway calmly.

“It's time to go, Elle.”

She stills in Adam's arms, then pulls back. She gets up, but he grabs her arm, and it's all very pathetic and unbecoming: he repeats her name and tries to pull her back but she slips her hand from his grip and stumbles to join her father. “You'll always be my Romeo,” she whispers, and then Bob slams the door, just as Adam reaches it.

Bob purposefully leads her past the room's window, and Adam follows her progression until she's out of sight.

Her Romeo, she said. His heart sinks into his stomach, and he hasn't even the strength to scream deserved abuse at Bob.

-

“Time for your dinner, Mr Monroe.”

She stands by the door, neatly dressed, skirt pressed and shoes shined, the very next day.

“Elle,” he says cautiously, and walks around her.

“That's very forward of you, Mr Monroe,” she says, and laughs.

He takes her by the shoulders and looks into her eyes. There's not a hint of recognition; her gaze slides off him easily, and she is neither scared nor upset. He pushes her away.

“I'm not hungry.”

-

The opportunity presents itself to him, and he takes it. He runs. Peter is an easy one, so used to manipulation that he doesn't even see it.

He runs from his prison and the constant reminder of the Elle who is not Elle, and tells himself that this is better. His plans can continue, without the worry of a loved one.

He tells himself that.

In the shipping yard, he doesn't know why she follows him rather than Peter, her new toy (he likes to think that she never had toys before), but she catches up to him quickly and he always suspected that she was good. He's proud of her.

“Stop!” she shouts, and he's pinned in any way, between a crate and a van, and her bolts of electricity are coming thick and fast. “Did you really think you were going to get away? You made Peter use me to escape, and you're going to pay for that.”

“I already am, Elle.” He steps forward, and she balls her fists, electricity spilling out from between her fingers. He comes closer, and she doesn't move, but her face twists into a snarl.

“What are you going to do, hit me?” she spits.

He slides his hands around her face – her expression slackens, and she's clearly confused. He can almost see all the blank spaces in her head. “There are so many things that I wish I'd told you, Elle. I wish I'd told you that no one's worth this, and I wish I'd told you that I didn't care about you. I wish I'd told you I loved you.” He kisses her on the forehead, for longer than he should, and she doesn't respond. “Please don't ever be Juliet,” he says, and lets go.

He runs.

She doesn't follow.


End file.
